One of the BEST takes on a man's life I've ever heard penned in song: Passion Pit's "Take a Walk" without being overwrought and melodramatic. This isn't "Patches." Don't watch it; just listen to the lyrics and how they're sung; it's like listening to human history that's still fresh today_and as it turns out, we are and it is.
All these kinds of places
Make it seem like it's been ages
And tomorrow's sun and buildings scrape the sky.
I love this country dearly
I can feel the latter clearly
But I never thought I'd be alone to try.
Once I was outside Penn station
Selling red and white carnations
We were still alone, my wife and I.
Before we married, saved my money
Brought my dear wife over.
Now I work to bring my family stateside.
Got off the boat, they stayed a while
then scattered 'cross the coast.
Once a year I'll see them for a week or so at most.
I took a walk
Ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh
Practice isn't perfect
but the market cuts a loss.
I remind myself that times could be much worse.
My wife won't ask me questions-
there's not so much to ask.
And she'll never flaunt around an empty purse.
What's my mother lacking
Just to stay a couple nights
And decided she would stay the rest of her life.
And watch my little children
Play some boardgame in the kitchen
And I sit and pray they never feel my strife.
But then my partner called to say the pension funds were gone
He made some bad investments, now the accounts are overdrawn
I took a walk.
Ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh
Honey, it's your son, I think I borrowed just too much.
We had taxes, we had bills, we had a lifestyle to front.
And tonight I swear I'll come home and we'll make love like we're young.
But tomorrow , you'll cook dinner for the neighbors and their kids.
We can rip apart the socialists and all their damn taxes.
You'll see I am no criminal, I'm down on both bad knees.
I'm just too much a coward to admit when I'm in need.
I took a walk.
(take a walk, take a walk, take a walk)
(take a walk, take a walk, take a walk)
Ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh
I took a walk
(take a walk, take a walk, take a walk)
(take a walk, take a walk, take a walk)
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_a_Walk_%28Passion_Pit_song%29
Monday, November 26, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
'Lincoln' Women: How Sally Field, Gloria Reuben, and S. Epatha Merkerson Stole Daniel Day-Lewis' Show By Brent Lang
'Lincoln' Women: How Sally Field, Gloria Reuben, and S. Epatha Merkerson Stole Daniel Day-Lewis' Show By Brent Lang
Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" is, on the face of it, a standard "great man" biopic. Basked in a honeydew light, overflowing with sage advice, Daniel Day-Lewis' Great Emancipator is depicted as constantly and self-consciously speaking to the ages well before he belongs to them.
But let us now praise the film's not-as-famous women. For what rescues "Lincoln" from bombast are the slier and subtler performances by a trio of fantastic and often under-utilized actresses -- Sally Field, Gloria Reuben and S. Epatha Merkerson.
Each one uses her limited screen time to etch a devastating portrait of the limitations that faced women in a male-dominated society. After all, if the legislators debating the merits of the 13th Amendment in the movie fret openly that abolishing slavery will begin a slippery slope to black enfranchisement, they seem even more horrified at the prospect that it one day might lead to granting women the right to vote.
Though some critics have griped about Spielberg's penchant for speechifying in "Lincoln," there has been near universal praise for Day-Lewis and for Tommy Lee Jones' work as the wily Thaddeus Stevens. Field's take on First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln -- a woman Louis C.K. quipped on "Saturday Night Live" recently was "historically insane" -- has been more divisive.
In TheWrap, for instance, Steve Pond wrote, "Sally Field may well be nominated for Supporting Actress for her Mary Todd Lincoln, but to me her hysteria was one of the least-successful parts of the film."
Yet Field's work is in many ways more revelatory than that of Day-Lewis. True, the Irish-Anglo acting god daringly gives the 16th president a historically accurate high voice and indelibly paints a picture of a great orator with an outhouse sense of humor, but his modifications are slight tweaks to the Lincoln myth. Field's interpretation is a whole-scale reinvention.
Field's Mary is privately unhinged, true. But she is also a smooth Washington operator, comfortable sparring with Stevens over her White House redecorating and forcibly pressuring her husband to carry the 13th Amendment to the finish line while wielding little more than a fan.
Even her mania is rooted in the death of her young son Willy; an empathetic anchor that keeps Mary from becoming simply the backwoods, social-climbing hysteric she's been portrayed as in the past.
In screenwriter Tony Kushner, Field finds an eager co-conspirator. As Kushner confessed on NPR, the Lincolns had a turbulent relationship in part because of Abraham Lincoln's emotional coldness.
"People always think about Mary as being difficult and she absolutely was, but Lincoln wasn't easy either," Kushner said. "He was remote and complicated and rather interestingly fond of telling her things that would upset her horribly, like these dreams that he kept having and he would leave her kind of in a state night after night, telling her that he was having these kind of scary dreams.
It's an enormously complicated relationship and the family is a tragic family."
The only false note in an otherwise galvanizing portrayal, is having Mary deliver a line that is a too historically self-aware.
"All anyone will remember about me was that I was crazy and ruined your happiness," Mary says at one point -- to which my companion let forth a large guffaw.
Field who packed 25 pounds onto her slender frame and allowed the camera to scan her creased face is a revelation -- it's a reminder that the plucky star of "Norma Rae" is good for more than Boniva ads.
But Mary Todd Lincoln isn't the only female who elbows her way into this big screen men's club. Gloria Reuben's Elizabeth Keckley is also a marvel.
Dramaturgically it's a thankless role with Reuben's freed slave seamstress frequently used as a stand-in for all-antebellum African American suffering. Yet Reuben grounds the performance in a simmering fury and heartbreak, using her eyes to register the pangs of hurt that greets the racist slights Keckley is exposed to on a daily basis.
Her conversation in the White House portico with Daniel Day-Lewis about the meaning of emancipation is a bravura moment -- a reminder of just how long a walk to freedom 19th century blacks faced.
Likewise, S. Epatha Merkerson's Lydia Smith is perhaps the greatest master class in doing a lot with a little since Judi Dench captured a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1998 for her eight-minute cameo in "Shakespeare in Love."
Smith, the housekeeper and (spoiler alert) common-law wife of Thaddeus Stevens, has two fleeting scenes. In one, she gently removes Jones' coat as he enters their Washington, D.C., home after the amendment passes, in the other she reads the constitutional addition aloud in bed to her secret-paramour. It is, in the words of another Kushner play [Angels in America _ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_A_Gay_Fantasia_on_National_Themes & http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318997/], a reminder that "the world only spins forward."
Indeed, the entire film represents a major step forward for Spielberg whose earlier boy's adventures were largely all-male affairs. Aside from Embeth Davidtz's frightened maid in "Schindler's List," Whoopi Goldberg's martyr-like Celie in "The Color Purple" and Karen Allen's fiery adventurer in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the Spielberg women are a weightless bunch. Even great actresses like Julianne Moore in "The Lost World" are given gossamer thin screen time.
Here, transported by Kushner's words, he allows these women to step forward out of the shadows and into history. Next time maybe he'll let them take center stage.
http://www.thewrap.com/awards/article/lincoln-women-how-sally-field-and-gloria-reuben-stole-daniel-day-lewis-show-65666
Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" is, on the face of it, a standard "great man" biopic. Basked in a honeydew light, overflowing with sage advice, Daniel Day-Lewis' Great Emancipator is depicted as constantly and self-consciously speaking to the ages well before he belongs to them.
But let us now praise the film's not-as-famous women. For what rescues "Lincoln" from bombast are the slier and subtler performances by a trio of fantastic and often under-utilized actresses -- Sally Field, Gloria Reuben and S. Epatha Merkerson.
Each one uses her limited screen time to etch a devastating portrait of the limitations that faced women in a male-dominated society. After all, if the legislators debating the merits of the 13th Amendment in the movie fret openly that abolishing slavery will begin a slippery slope to black enfranchisement, they seem even more horrified at the prospect that it one day might lead to granting women the right to vote.
Though some critics have griped about Spielberg's penchant for speechifying in "Lincoln," there has been near universal praise for Day-Lewis and for Tommy Lee Jones' work as the wily Thaddeus Stevens. Field's take on First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln -- a woman Louis C.K. quipped on "Saturday Night Live" recently was "historically insane" -- has been more divisive.
In TheWrap, for instance, Steve Pond wrote, "Sally Field may well be nominated for Supporting Actress for her Mary Todd Lincoln, but to me her hysteria was one of the least-successful parts of the film."
Yet Field's work is in many ways more revelatory than that of Day-Lewis. True, the Irish-Anglo acting god daringly gives the 16th president a historically accurate high voice and indelibly paints a picture of a great orator with an outhouse sense of humor, but his modifications are slight tweaks to the Lincoln myth. Field's interpretation is a whole-scale reinvention.
Field's Mary is privately unhinged, true. But she is also a smooth Washington operator, comfortable sparring with Stevens over her White House redecorating and forcibly pressuring her husband to carry the 13th Amendment to the finish line while wielding little more than a fan.
Even her mania is rooted in the death of her young son Willy; an empathetic anchor that keeps Mary from becoming simply the backwoods, social-climbing hysteric she's been portrayed as in the past.
In screenwriter Tony Kushner, Field finds an eager co-conspirator. As Kushner confessed on NPR, the Lincolns had a turbulent relationship in part because of Abraham Lincoln's emotional coldness.
"People always think about Mary as being difficult and she absolutely was, but Lincoln wasn't easy either," Kushner said. "He was remote and complicated and rather interestingly fond of telling her things that would upset her horribly, like these dreams that he kept having and he would leave her kind of in a state night after night, telling her that he was having these kind of scary dreams.
It's an enormously complicated relationship and the family is a tragic family."
The only false note in an otherwise galvanizing portrayal, is having Mary deliver a line that is a too historically self-aware.
"All anyone will remember about me was that I was crazy and ruined your happiness," Mary says at one point -- to which my companion let forth a large guffaw.
Field who packed 25 pounds onto her slender frame and allowed the camera to scan her creased face is a revelation -- it's a reminder that the plucky star of "Norma Rae" is good for more than Boniva ads.
But Mary Todd Lincoln isn't the only female who elbows her way into this big screen men's club. Gloria Reuben's Elizabeth Keckley is also a marvel.
Dramaturgically it's a thankless role with Reuben's freed slave seamstress frequently used as a stand-in for all-antebellum African American suffering. Yet Reuben grounds the performance in a simmering fury and heartbreak, using her eyes to register the pangs of hurt that greets the racist slights Keckley is exposed to on a daily basis.
Her conversation in the White House portico with Daniel Day-Lewis about the meaning of emancipation is a bravura moment -- a reminder of just how long a walk to freedom 19th century blacks faced.
Likewise, S. Epatha Merkerson's Lydia Smith is perhaps the greatest master class in doing a lot with a little since Judi Dench captured a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1998 for her eight-minute cameo in "Shakespeare in Love."
Smith, the housekeeper and (spoiler alert) common-law wife of Thaddeus Stevens, has two fleeting scenes. In one, she gently removes Jones' coat as he enters their Washington, D.C., home after the amendment passes, in the other she reads the constitutional addition aloud in bed to her secret-paramour. It is, in the words of another Kushner play [Angels in America _ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_A_Gay_Fantasia_on_National_Themes & http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318997/], a reminder that "the world only spins forward."
Indeed, the entire film represents a major step forward for Spielberg whose earlier boy's adventures were largely all-male affairs. Aside from Embeth Davidtz's frightened maid in "Schindler's List," Whoopi Goldberg's martyr-like Celie in "The Color Purple" and Karen Allen's fiery adventurer in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the Spielberg women are a weightless bunch. Even great actresses like Julianne Moore in "The Lost World" are given gossamer thin screen time.
Here, transported by Kushner's words, he allows these women to step forward out of the shadows and into history. Next time maybe he'll let them take center stage.
http://www.thewrap.com/awards/article/lincoln-women-how-sally-field-and-gloria-reuben-stole-daniel-day-lewis-show-65666
Monday, November 12, 2012
New Extended Version_Dia's TeamBang (3)_GOING ON SALE SOON!!
New Extended Version_Dia's TeamBang (3)_GOING ON SALE SOON!!
Cheerleader Dia's the only girl on a
busload of horny boys, she can't stand, because their teacher / coach,
Mr. Dean, is the man she'd open her firm thighs wide for anytime and
anywhere, and already has, so he'd allow her to be "alone" with him, in
back of the dark team bus, on the long, after game ride home.
But, Mr. Dean has a banging surprise planned for
tender Dia, and for his winning, all-male team. There will be fun for
all: sexy, young cheerleader Dia, his fit and well-deserving sports
champions, their beloved coach, and even a big, surprise guest.
Thursday, November 08, 2012
answer to establishing copyright for a character or creative work
In answer to establishing copyright for a character or creative work:
For legal backup reference to establish official US/world copyright, LOC is the way, especially if anyone is suing _
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ online Library of Congress registry;
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formpa.pdf for performing arts copyright (film, TV, music, choreography, screenplays, etc.);
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formtx.pdf copyrighting literary (fiction, nonfiction, catalog, textbooks, etc.);
also, for establishing ownership within US entertainment there is WGA http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/
LOC has the greater weight and world reach.
For legal backup reference to establish official US/world copyright, LOC is the way, especially if anyone is suing _
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ online Library of Congress registry;
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formpa.pdf for performing arts copyright (film, TV, music, choreography, screenplays, etc.);
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formtx.pdf copyrighting literary (fiction, nonfiction, catalog, textbooks, etc.);
also, for establishing ownership within US entertainment there is WGA http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/
LOC has the greater weight and world reach.
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Books › Kindle Edition › "neale sourna"
1.
Neale Sourna's SexSinger: Cunnilingus_How to Give Head (Oral Sex and Eating Pussy), for Giving Women Orgasms of Cuntlicious Joy! Info and Games! by Neale Sourna (Oct 17, 2011)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $9.97 |
2.
Neale Sourna's CuntSinger: Cunnilingus: How to Give Head (Oral Sex and Eating Pussy), for Giving Women Orgasms of Cuntlicious Joy! by Neale Sourna (May 24, 2009)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $9.97 |
3.
Hobble by Neale Sourna (Aug 14, 2007)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $9.59 | ||||
| Paperback
Order in the next 12 hours to get it by Thursday, Nov 8.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.
|
$16.95 | $74.73 |
4.
NCAD-v3n1.1--Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary--Sascha: Public Parking, Sex Squared by Neale Sourna (Dec 18, 2008)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $6.25 |
5.
Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary, Volume 2, Number 1--Ross: Daddy's Little Whore, uh, Seductress by Neale Sourna (Aug 14, 2007)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $6.25 |
6.
NCADv3n1--Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary--3SexViews: Ross, Laila, Sascha by Neale Sourna (Dec 17, 2008)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $6.25 |
7.
NCAD--v3n1.3--Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary--Ross: My Daughter's Anal [Asshole] Cherry by Neale Sourna (Dec 25, 2008)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $5.99 |
8.
NCAD--v3n1.2--Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary--Laila: Daddy's Willing Little Slut by Neale Sourna (Dec 23, 2008)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $5.99 |
9.
Dia's Coach (1) by Neale Sourna (Dec 5, 2011)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $4.97 |
10.
Three - By Invitation Only by Neale Sourna (Sep 8, 2012)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $3.97 |
11.
Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary, Volume 1, #1--Laila: Cozy With Daddy by Neale Sourna (Apr 9, 2007)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $3.50 | ||||
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $3.39 |
12.
Neale Sourna's North Coast Academies' Diary, Volume 1, #2--Yune: Suck My - - - - by Neale Sourna (Apr 9, 2007)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $2.99 |
13.
Hesitation by Neale Sourna (Sep 16, 2012)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.97 |
14.
All Along the Watchtower: Submerged (A Novel Excerpt) by Neale Sourna (Aug 27, 2009)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.97 |
15.
Steve's Monkey's Paw & MORE by Neale Sourna (Aug 14, 2007)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.95 | ||||
| Paperback
Order in the next 9 hours to get it by Thursday, Nov 8.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.
|
$3.95 | $3.72 | $3.72 |
16.
Rough-Me Dot Com by Neale Sourna (Sep 25, 2011)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.50 |
17.
Temple and Silent Tommy: Bedrooms [A Post Second World War (WWII) Love Story/Novel Excerpt] by Neale Sourna (Oct 24, 2011)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.00 |
18.
The Freelancer by Neale Sourna (Sep 9, 2011)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $1.00 |
19.
No Wedding Night by Neale Sourna (Feb 26, 2012)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $0.99 |
20.
Seduce Her Like Keanu Reeves (3 Articles: Seduce, 10 Seduction Secrets, List of Bad Lovers) by Neale Sourna (Aug 17, 2009)
| Formats | Price | New | Used | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly | $0.67 |
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Friday, November 02, 2012
INTERVIEW: Neale Sourna's HOBBLE
INTERVIEW: Jan 2003, Neale Sourna's HOBBLE
Handsome JD's HOBBLE rating: "compelling", "very sensual & spicy", "a terribly sexy, erotic, and guy friendly, um, romance".
Interview: Neale Sourna on HOBBLE
JD: Why'd you write Hobble?
NS: Because I wanted to. [laughs] And because at a point I had to. I was writing the first draft of what was turning out to be a novel when I had the image and feelings of a young woman character wander gently and provocatively into my head, someone quite innocent yet worldly, with badly damaged but well-tended ankles. I knew she was upset, frustrated but also that she was in love or falling in love.
And, I had a dream, which I normally try to keep notes on; of my dreams, noting especially ones that are writer-friendly. This one dream starred Anthony Hopkins of all people--I dream in movie or television format a lot, and see famous people in dreamscape; probably because they already have symbolic meaning--import from their work.
I plainly saw Hopkins and how people respected yet feared him; the young woman he kept, whom no one helped; physical trauma; two tall, shocked workmen on Hopkins' wooded lot; blood from the girl pooled on a car's floor on way to hospital, her anguish, Hopkins' fear of losing her, and his unrepentant hardness.
Dreams can be so brief or so long and yet so, so multilayered. I realized that that particular dream and my waking inspiration of the young woman overlapped, and started thinking (questioning possibilities of direction and exposition) and making mental notes.
I knew there was a guy; handsome and charming and smart, of course, someone unlike grumpy and dark-natured Hopkins, yet able to go toe-to-toe in a highly charged, sexual love triangle with a lead character type as strong as the real onscreen A. Hopkins.
I was getting a feel for Day's hero especially when he showed up in my head, telling me his very first scene, which happened to be the very first scene, first paragraph of the story -- his running on the beach and literally falling "for" and on her.
So, he's an athlete, or athletic to be more precise, well-cut of body and mind, someone who'd normally get her attention even if he hadn't physically fallen on her.
Then, I got a little bogged because eventhough the story was sketching out well from top to bottom without notes quite smoothly, I realized it wasn't a short story but a novella [partially wrong there]. I decided to keep the name Hopkins in homage to the man from QBVII, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, REMAINS OF THE DAY, and the lot and cast out for a name for my two younger people.
The name DAY popped into my head much as the character herself had, it sounded good but a little oddly questionable; but, I found it in my name book; Scandinavian, I believe it is, and kept it. It sounded bright and hopeful but with the possibility of going all wrong in a heartbeat; much like a sunny day in Midwest US just before a tornado devastates everything or bypasses you by an inch.
Physically and emotional range, I initially thought of her in the [visual] framework of actresses like Jasmine Guy, Salli Richardson, or Halle Berry.
One of my nephews [over 18] who proofed for me decided to [mentally] settle on DARK ANGEL's Jessica Alba to get around the fact that a sexy character has more than a few markers of my own. [Sexy character and your aunt, not a good combination.]
And, Benn was easy once I decided he was a strong character, who often kept things to himself and that outwardly he looked like Benjamin Bratt. So, I gave him Ben Bratt's genetic background with embellishment, which locked into my mind the wide range that required for him although at times he seems to be nearly static but isn't.
Again, it felt right to tag the character with a similar name, Benjamin being too obvious, so I settled on the surname of one of my favorite characters in literary romance, Mistress Eliza Bennet of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, which explains the spelling.
It was a lighter, less in your face story as a novella; but, I realized that some things need explanation or at least it would be nice if Benn would be more forthcoming and give a little more info about a few things.
A "little more info" and a "little more forthcoming" made the language more blunt and more male, added a few [only a few] more love/conflict scenes and dug deeper into each character's psyche and actions and fears, and made the interrelationships among them tighter, more vicious, and more of a victory or defeat in the end for each.
Also, in the I-had-to-write vein, someone I love dearly, two someone's eventually had a harsh 2001 and 2002 mentally [original draft, final drafts respectively] and especially in 2001, the frustrations and fears I felt then went into Day and her tenuously fragile mental situation and her lack of personal, physical freedom.
Also the frustrated, stymied feeling of dealing with the overly structured, untrusting, imperiously inconsiderate way some mental professionals treat their "patients."
Day is the heroine and delicate, appearing to be completely powerless, but is also as tempered as steel, a deadly force to be reckoned with--even with all sharp objects under lock and key; she's able to make very hard choices and be able to take responsibility for those choices. Most especially when they concern Benn.
Hopkins is the villain whom we can find something to love about or at least sympathize about in his desperation to have, entirely control, and keep someone he should never have had in the first place. But, he's completely, unrepentantly unredeemable. A man who knows and owns his own mind.
And, Benn's the hero [not just MY hero, pleasing me, which he also is; he's definitely his own man].
He's an ambiguity-driven hero, who keeps things from us, who does things his own way that perhaps we feel is a stomach turner, but who's asked to take action and delivers, as long as he too gets what he most wants in the end.
JD: While you were telling the characters' stories, did they surprise you?
NS: YES! Like when Benn keeps things from us, that quite often meant me, as well, on a "need to know" basis.
I didn't know the full extent of Benn's professional background until you do when it's revealed about 75% of the way through. I didn't know the truth of Day's ankles and who and why such a horrible thing had happened until she revealed it, or his full background. [Thanks Ann Rice and your Mayfair Witches for giving me a backbone (inspirationally) on a major Day / Hopkins plot point.]
I swear writing for fiction isn't as fiction as we'd like to propose, it's more in the vein of being a psychic medium, of channeling experiences from people or spirits in another realm, dimension, or some such. You'll reread a page you wrote just the day or week before and you're amazed by what's there.
Sometimes not even truly remembering writing specifically what is on that page. It's like stumbling upon a letter you believed to be yours and finding instead that it was your sister's or brother's ... familiar, but not yours. At a point it can be scary, but now I guess, for me it's just ... astonishing is a good word. Mind-blowing. Simply very cool.
JD: Have you been writing long?
NS: I've been writing in my head industriously since elementary school [Roosevelt Elementary in Garfield Heights OH], when I'd alternate nights of making up scenarios of my favorite film, book, or TV stars interacting with me [Actionwise, and yes, romantically and sexually--don't tell me preadolescent kids don't think about romance and sex. It may not be a completed thought but they're there. Always. Hell, they're learning behavior they're, hopefully, going to need.]
Also, I've always had a good command of the language. I have a book report from like third or fourth grade which I found and reread a few years back. Very mature and still works, not at all the kiddylike I read a book, it was about, it was very good, etc.
I even remember my first "C" in creative writing was from about fifth grade. We were to pen about being a Christmas ornament or some such thing. I didn't want to do "thing". I couldn't imagine "thing". I wrote about a Christmas cat, a cougar, I'd just read a library book or two or more about cougars, bobcats, and, oh course, noble and dangerous "Bagheera" of The Jungle Book rules forever. Big fat "C".
But I wrote what I wanted to and was glad; I'm still glad I did.
Next step, I still didn't exactly "write" on paper for pleasure or necessity though, except for class, which of course inspires one to never write, except for those most absolutely necessary times to get the grade.
I'd solidly decided by junior high [Robert H Jamison Jr HS] and high school [John F Kennedy HS] to be Henry Mancini or Franz Waxman, that I'd write music, scoring movies and so I took theory and composition in college [Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland OH and Lake Erie College, Painesville OH]. There, I got very into live theatre production, especially in coordinating all the elements as stage manager.
I realize now, at this moment really, that under Jake Rufli, [Love you, forever, Jake!] we got to participate fully, as new scripts were torn down and retooled for performance. We got to put together all the elements of just the right words, voice inflection, body movement, lights, design, etc, that captures the imagination of an audience.
I still wasn't writing per se, including totally avoiding until the last any class that required me to write papers.
Peculiarly, when transferring to Lake Erie I easily aced a 500 word, write on the spot essay for part of a grammar testing for opting out of redundant English classes. I got on a role and really didn't want to stop at the time limit.
Which is a lesson to me that if I can write what I truly want, I find it hard to stop unless forced to by hunger, sleep, or bathroom sirens.
Eventually, I went to grad school for two semesters [American University DC, Film and Video] where I got to expand on the technical and creative knowledge of writing television hour-long format and film scripts. It stuck.
Even after I left, because of lack of tuition; while I absorbed more "life lessons" I kept writing off and on or studying about it on my own even if I wasn't writing.
Bought a Smith Corona wordprocessor because I was definitely going to write, and hardly used it for a year, except to work up a rough draft of a STAR TREK NEXT GEN episode, not so good, but good idea [similarly themed to JOHNNY MNEMONIC].
I got pissed off hearing the sexist and violent phrase "rule of thumb" then got my head into working through a QUANTUM LEAP with that phrase as the theme ["Rule of Thumb" -- much better executed, than the Trek]. Then, I wrote two script adaptations from an acquaintance's short stories; adding characters, insightful characterizations, names, action, etc. [including TOY GUNS ... AND TRUTH (Yes, I love ellipses.)].
I got a second, no third hand Mac and continued to write spec scripts, including film [PERFECT MISTRESS aka TRIADS bka FRAMES (a New Century Contest Finalist)] and started to pen short stories, especially when I started getting so many ideas that scripting wasn't feasible for all of them. I was going to use the shorts as script treatments.
But having decided that since writing the two major love scenes in PM/T/F, that they had been quite trying for different author psychological reasons, I began writing a few shorts with a stronger erotic edge, to see where it'd bother me or I'd chicken out.
Like "Thelma" in THELMA AND LOUISE I thought, "I've got a knack for this shit." I was also -- um, between jobs -- aka under- then unemployed for a several months and got psyched to submit a few to magazines. I was told nothing or that I was "too literary" -- isn't that a good thing?
Not for getting paid, I guess.
I moved back home and continued writing shorts and found that one -- AEGIS [work in progress], about a Hip Hop undercover cop with a very sexual life that gets out of control--got out of control. Not a short story at all. A novel. My first rough draft.
Which was immediately followed by HOBBLE's rough draft. Which was immediately followed by an even longer third rough draft of a novel explaining another dream of mine, of just one very short vignette ... of how a man, a general of great destructive notoriety, who destroyed a woman's people to have her, how could he ever truly win her back -- ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER [work in progress].
I no longer say I don't write novels. Oh, and by the way, I share my birthday with Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones and the old literary pornographer himself, The Marquis de Sade.
JD: There are some pretty harsh things that pop up in this novel -- HOBBLE; things that the characters do to each other, private agendas, and the like, were all those preplanned or interesting luck?
NS: Most of it flowed, with me guiding it, but, like I said, sometimes these guys come up with stuff that scares me, which usually means it's their truth, even if it's not my truth, and that if I hold back and pretty it up, it won't have the proper impact that all our work together had built up to.
I like what Diana Gabaldon [OUTLANDER series] said of readers asking her why her characters said certain naughty words or did such a thing or was of some persuasion of one kind or another. It's not that she herself, in a similar situation, would actually say that foul word or do that heinous thing but that in writing truthfully for her characters from the Outlander series?
[i.e. in Gabaldon's series]
A young, Oxford educated, European male of the 1970s, despite being raised by a minister, might still say the "F" word under stress and duress.
Or that a 1770s early middle-aged, unmarried, European sadist of a certain social and military rank -- if left alone too long to play, with his most favorite antagonist/victim -- might do a certain vile thing or two or three, not because of his sexual orientation but because of his perverted deviant orientation. You write that a young husband spanks his wife with a leather belt ... and why.
[Gabaldon and myself] find it interesting that the spanking [in her book]gets more complaints than the buggering of a child.
You simply write it, without censoring for -- Is it right? Will it make me famous? Will it? Will it? Etc. And then there's no writer's block. In editing, you make certain it sounds and feels like it should for that character, who is not you or me but themselves.
Hitler isn't Gandhi, who isn't US Grant, who isn't LL Cool J.
If real people are just who they are, then characters really must be too. Otherwise it gets really boring.
JD: Is Neale Sourna your real name?
NS: Yes. And no. Not my given birth name but is the name, well, names given to me. One per night from two separate entities, in two separate dreams on consecutive nights. Liked them both when I broke down the syllables to see what each meant. Then realized they were a good name together.
Added an extra E to give the name a little more sexual ambiguity. I'd toyed with other writing/business names -- using my own seemed too personal and egocentric. Neale Sourna really suits me. It's Cleveland-ethnicky, nongender specific, and who I am ... sometimes.
Neal, Neale [British isles] = chieftain
Sourna [Persia, Iran, Middle East] = warrior aunt
JD: Like doing autographs?
NS: Not really, not yet. I usually like meeting people; but, autographs are ... odd. Except on a check for me to cash. I suppose autographs are proof that you met the author, provided someone didn't fake you out and sign in their stead. But, if I have friends and relatives that don't believe my stories of meeting someone then maybe there's something wrong with them or me.
But, that's just me.
A Cary Grant or Zane autograph are rare, I rather like that; but, please, enjoy my work, talk to me for awhile if we meet and let's steer away from hurting my mitt with writer's cramp. I have a lotta stories yet jostling my brain and fingertips to get out and down.
JD: What research, if any, did you do for Hobble?
NS: [Inter]Net research about female reproductive castration and reversal possibilities, checking with a nephew for correct lyrics for the quote from Depeche Mode and for the correct title for the Dave Matthews Band single mentioned, and um, I think that's it for formal type research stuff. The rest came from things I've read and seen and heard over the years and brain stored in case of conversation or such.
JD: What experiences or expertise make you qualified to write this story?
NS: That I feel for these people, these characters, the good and the bad. And, as you can see the line between goodness and badness, to me, is exceedingly fine and mutable. I could hear these people, see their side. I don't necessarily feel characters are images I myself just make up and manipulate. I did that a long time ago, or not so long ago, before the flow.
Once you really feel and see them, and let characters do and say what they need to or want to, despite what you yourself might would do--that alone makes an author qualified. It's like telling someone what you saw or heard.
So many people can't do that without embellishing. You tell them, "The dog died." And, they're repeating that a white Chihuahua was beaten to death by a peglegged Italian. Colorful but not the same simple, singular truth as, "The dog died."
JD: Why is the lead character Benn who he is and why? How'd you get his voice?
NS: Benn is Benn because he's what Day wanted. She came first, then Hopkins, then my general hero, who pops to the fore in my mind. From there our intrepid hero grew and changed, and from giving me the first paragraph of the book, which established a certain physicality and technical/educational background for him and clarified that he and not Ms. Day would be telling this story.
I did make a conscious decision of trying to figure out what he looked like, instead of general generic N Sourna hero and to get a better grasp of who he was. I didn't want him to be plainly white American, and straight Black American seemed too something, she was different [and at that time and not till the end did I know her full background myself] from Hopkins [there's your white male, British, but, y'know].
Then with the physical qualities, the possible range of emotion Day was likely to trigger in a man who truly wanted her or loved her, and deciding to try contemporary, urban Native American, Ben Bratt popped into mind. He has the physical characteristics that were surfacing, I know his physical voice and some of his emotional performance range, and his ethnicity with a little tampering suited me.
Plus, synchronicity.
I thought to give Bennet long hair and a beard to cue us about his life being different -- Piñero with Bratt came out and he was making the rounds in some footage, bearded and longer haired. [I love those confirmation moments. When I can make sense of them.]
Once he was in place, and Benn given his name, his narrative voice, his amorality, his humor and bewildering desires just were. He's a guy I could get along with and have a conversation with; but, he's not me. That is so cool. Characters really are kind of like having children. They're part of you, but not you. The best ones go their own way but take you along.
JD: What's your next project?
NS: Project(s). I was going to work on compiling and buffing up a collection of erotica short stories I have, first, but my other two novels, AEGIS and WATCHTOWER, and some other stories, plus marketing my work are keeping me rotating them to whichever one is bugging me the most and nagging at my narrative memory, until I have to jot down or key it down for my own sake.
Originally, I'd planned to release one or both of the novels next. I released HOBBLE first because it was the smallest and most complete. Figured I learn the book publishing and marketing business with that first. Now, though, I'll continue working on everything until one of them is finished.
That'll be the next release, most likely. AEGIS probably has more scenes needed at the moment but I want to do some more actual historical and cultural research to anchor WATCHTOWER since I'm still figuring whether to release it as one book or as two with most likely a third or...?
Check the website [www.neale-sourna.com], though, in the meanwhile, I'll try to add some material to tantalize and tease and hopefully fulfill your intellectual erotic hunger.
JD: Thank you, Neale.
NS: Your welcome.
My baby, HOBBLE
[An Adult Novel], has won an award_Best of Year in Romantic Erotica by BlackRefer.com.
Yippee and huzzah!!
What a surprise! Thank you so much. It looks "mahhhvelous," don't you think? Thank you, Dolores Thornton, thank you, BlackRefer.com, for this sehr tres cool honor. -- Neale
*********************************
http://www.neale-sourna.com/interview--1-2003--JDuke.html
Interview: Neale Sourna on HOBBLE
[An Adult Novel]
by Jordan Duke
© ScriptCleveland 2003
NS: Because I wanted to. [laughs] And because at a point I had to. I was writing the first draft of what was turning out to be a novel when I had the image and feelings of a young woman character wander gently and provocatively into my head, someone quite innocent yet worldly, with badly damaged but well-tended ankles. I knew she was upset, frustrated but also that she was in love or falling in love.
And, I had a dream, which I normally try to keep notes on; of my dreams, noting especially ones that are writer-friendly. This one dream starred Anthony Hopkins of all people--I dream in movie or television format a lot, and see famous people in dreamscape; probably because they already have symbolic meaning--import from their work.
I plainly saw Hopkins and how people respected yet feared him; the young woman he kept, whom no one helped; physical trauma; two tall, shocked workmen on Hopkins' wooded lot; blood from the girl pooled on a car's floor on way to hospital, her anguish, Hopkins' fear of losing her, and his unrepentant hardness.
Dreams can be so brief or so long and yet so, so multilayered. I realized that that particular dream and my waking inspiration of the young woman overlapped, and started thinking (questioning possibilities of direction and exposition) and making mental notes.
I knew there was a guy; handsome and charming and smart, of course, someone unlike grumpy and dark-natured Hopkins, yet able to go toe-to-toe in a highly charged, sexual love triangle with a lead character type as strong as the real onscreen A. Hopkins.
I was getting a feel for Day's hero especially when he showed up in my head, telling me his very first scene, which happened to be the very first scene, first paragraph of the story -- his running on the beach and literally falling "for" and on her.
So, he's an athlete, or athletic to be more precise, well-cut of body and mind, someone who'd normally get her attention even if he hadn't physically fallen on her.
Then, I got a little bogged because eventhough the story was sketching out well from top to bottom without notes quite smoothly, I realized it wasn't a short story but a novella [partially wrong there]. I decided to keep the name Hopkins in homage to the man from QBVII, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, REMAINS OF THE DAY, and the lot and cast out for a name for my two younger people.
The name DAY popped into my head much as the character herself had, it sounded good but a little oddly questionable; but, I found it in my name book; Scandinavian, I believe it is, and kept it. It sounded bright and hopeful but with the possibility of going all wrong in a heartbeat; much like a sunny day in Midwest US just before a tornado devastates everything or bypasses you by an inch.
Physically and emotional range, I initially thought of her in the [visual] framework of actresses like Jasmine Guy, Salli Richardson, or Halle Berry.
One of my nephews [over 18] who proofed for me decided to [mentally] settle on DARK ANGEL's Jessica Alba to get around the fact that a sexy character has more than a few markers of my own. [Sexy character and your aunt, not a good combination.]
And, Benn was easy once I decided he was a strong character, who often kept things to himself and that outwardly he looked like Benjamin Bratt. So, I gave him Ben Bratt's genetic background with embellishment, which locked into my mind the wide range that required for him although at times he seems to be nearly static but isn't.
Again, it felt right to tag the character with a similar name, Benjamin being too obvious, so I settled on the surname of one of my favorite characters in literary romance, Mistress Eliza Bennet of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, which explains the spelling.
It was a lighter, less in your face story as a novella; but, I realized that some things need explanation or at least it would be nice if Benn would be more forthcoming and give a little more info about a few things.
A "little more info" and a "little more forthcoming" made the language more blunt and more male, added a few [only a few] more love/conflict scenes and dug deeper into each character's psyche and actions and fears, and made the interrelationships among them tighter, more vicious, and more of a victory or defeat in the end for each.
Also, in the I-had-to-write vein, someone I love dearly, two someone's eventually had a harsh 2001 and 2002 mentally [original draft, final drafts respectively] and especially in 2001, the frustrations and fears I felt then went into Day and her tenuously fragile mental situation and her lack of personal, physical freedom.
Also the frustrated, stymied feeling of dealing with the overly structured, untrusting, imperiously inconsiderate way some mental professionals treat their "patients."
Day is the heroine and delicate, appearing to be completely powerless, but is also as tempered as steel, a deadly force to be reckoned with--even with all sharp objects under lock and key; she's able to make very hard choices and be able to take responsibility for those choices. Most especially when they concern Benn.
Hopkins is the villain whom we can find something to love about or at least sympathize about in his desperation to have, entirely control, and keep someone he should never have had in the first place. But, he's completely, unrepentantly unredeemable. A man who knows and owns his own mind.
And, Benn's the hero [not just MY hero, pleasing me, which he also is; he's definitely his own man].
He's an ambiguity-driven hero, who keeps things from us, who does things his own way that perhaps we feel is a stomach turner, but who's asked to take action and delivers, as long as he too gets what he most wants in the end.
JD: While you were telling the characters' stories, did they surprise you?
NS: YES! Like when Benn keeps things from us, that quite often meant me, as well, on a "need to know" basis.
I didn't know the full extent of Benn's professional background until you do when it's revealed about 75% of the way through. I didn't know the truth of Day's ankles and who and why such a horrible thing had happened until she revealed it, or his full background. [Thanks Ann Rice and your Mayfair Witches for giving me a backbone (inspirationally) on a major Day / Hopkins plot point.]
I swear writing for fiction isn't as fiction as we'd like to propose, it's more in the vein of being a psychic medium, of channeling experiences from people or spirits in another realm, dimension, or some such. You'll reread a page you wrote just the day or week before and you're amazed by what's there.
Sometimes not even truly remembering writing specifically what is on that page. It's like stumbling upon a letter you believed to be yours and finding instead that it was your sister's or brother's ... familiar, but not yours. At a point it can be scary, but now I guess, for me it's just ... astonishing is a good word. Mind-blowing. Simply very cool.
JD: Have you been writing long?
NS: I've been writing in my head industriously since elementary school [Roosevelt Elementary in Garfield Heights OH], when I'd alternate nights of making up scenarios of my favorite film, book, or TV stars interacting with me [Actionwise, and yes, romantically and sexually--don't tell me preadolescent kids don't think about romance and sex. It may not be a completed thought but they're there. Always. Hell, they're learning behavior they're, hopefully, going to need.]
Also, I've always had a good command of the language. I have a book report from like third or fourth grade which I found and reread a few years back. Very mature and still works, not at all the kiddylike I read a book, it was about, it was very good, etc.
I even remember my first "C" in creative writing was from about fifth grade. We were to pen about being a Christmas ornament or some such thing. I didn't want to do "thing". I couldn't imagine "thing". I wrote about a Christmas cat, a cougar, I'd just read a library book or two or more about cougars, bobcats, and, oh course, noble and dangerous "Bagheera" of The Jungle Book rules forever. Big fat "C".
But I wrote what I wanted to and was glad; I'm still glad I did.
Next step, I still didn't exactly "write" on paper for pleasure or necessity though, except for class, which of course inspires one to never write, except for those most absolutely necessary times to get the grade.
I'd solidly decided by junior high [Robert H Jamison Jr HS] and high school [John F Kennedy HS] to be Henry Mancini or Franz Waxman, that I'd write music, scoring movies and so I took theory and composition in college [Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland OH and Lake Erie College, Painesville OH]. There, I got very into live theatre production, especially in coordinating all the elements as stage manager.
I realize now, at this moment really, that under Jake Rufli, [Love you, forever, Jake!] we got to participate fully, as new scripts were torn down and retooled for performance. We got to put together all the elements of just the right words, voice inflection, body movement, lights, design, etc, that captures the imagination of an audience.
I still wasn't writing per se, including totally avoiding until the last any class that required me to write papers.
Peculiarly, when transferring to Lake Erie I easily aced a 500 word, write on the spot essay for part of a grammar testing for opting out of redundant English classes. I got on a role and really didn't want to stop at the time limit.
Which is a lesson to me that if I can write what I truly want, I find it hard to stop unless forced to by hunger, sleep, or bathroom sirens.
Eventually, I went to grad school for two semesters [American University DC, Film and Video] where I got to expand on the technical and creative knowledge of writing television hour-long format and film scripts. It stuck.
Even after I left, because of lack of tuition; while I absorbed more "life lessons" I kept writing off and on or studying about it on my own even if I wasn't writing.
Bought a Smith Corona wordprocessor because I was definitely going to write, and hardly used it for a year, except to work up a rough draft of a STAR TREK NEXT GEN episode, not so good, but good idea [similarly themed to JOHNNY MNEMONIC].
I got pissed off hearing the sexist and violent phrase "rule of thumb" then got my head into working through a QUANTUM LEAP with that phrase as the theme ["Rule of Thumb" -- much better executed, than the Trek]. Then, I wrote two script adaptations from an acquaintance's short stories; adding characters, insightful characterizations, names, action, etc. [including TOY GUNS ... AND TRUTH (Yes, I love ellipses.)].
I got a second, no third hand Mac and continued to write spec scripts, including film [PERFECT MISTRESS aka TRIADS bka FRAMES (a New Century Contest Finalist)] and started to pen short stories, especially when I started getting so many ideas that scripting wasn't feasible for all of them. I was going to use the shorts as script treatments.
But having decided that since writing the two major love scenes in PM/T/F, that they had been quite trying for different author psychological reasons, I began writing a few shorts with a stronger erotic edge, to see where it'd bother me or I'd chicken out.
Like "Thelma" in THELMA AND LOUISE I thought, "I've got a knack for this shit." I was also -- um, between jobs -- aka under- then unemployed for a several months and got psyched to submit a few to magazines. I was told nothing or that I was "too literary" -- isn't that a good thing?
Not for getting paid, I guess.
I moved back home and continued writing shorts and found that one -- AEGIS [work in progress], about a Hip Hop undercover cop with a very sexual life that gets out of control--got out of control. Not a short story at all. A novel. My first rough draft.
Which was immediately followed by HOBBLE's rough draft. Which was immediately followed by an even longer third rough draft of a novel explaining another dream of mine, of just one very short vignette ... of how a man, a general of great destructive notoriety, who destroyed a woman's people to have her, how could he ever truly win her back -- ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER [work in progress].
I no longer say I don't write novels. Oh, and by the way, I share my birthday with Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones and the old literary pornographer himself, The Marquis de Sade.
JD: There are some pretty harsh things that pop up in this novel -- HOBBLE; things that the characters do to each other, private agendas, and the like, were all those preplanned or interesting luck?
NS: Most of it flowed, with me guiding it, but, like I said, sometimes these guys come up with stuff that scares me, which usually means it's their truth, even if it's not my truth, and that if I hold back and pretty it up, it won't have the proper impact that all our work together had built up to.
I like what Diana Gabaldon [OUTLANDER series] said of readers asking her why her characters said certain naughty words or did such a thing or was of some persuasion of one kind or another. It's not that she herself, in a similar situation, would actually say that foul word or do that heinous thing but that in writing truthfully for her characters from the Outlander series?
[i.e. in Gabaldon's series]
A young, Oxford educated, European male of the 1970s, despite being raised by a minister, might still say the "F" word under stress and duress.
Or that a 1770s early middle-aged, unmarried, European sadist of a certain social and military rank -- if left alone too long to play, with his most favorite antagonist/victim -- might do a certain vile thing or two or three, not because of his sexual orientation but because of his perverted deviant orientation. You write that a young husband spanks his wife with a leather belt ... and why.
[Gabaldon and myself] find it interesting that the spanking [in her book]gets more complaints than the buggering of a child.
You simply write it, without censoring for -- Is it right? Will it make me famous? Will it? Will it? Etc. And then there's no writer's block. In editing, you make certain it sounds and feels like it should for that character, who is not you or me but themselves.
Hitler isn't Gandhi, who isn't US Grant, who isn't LL Cool J.
If real people are just who they are, then characters really must be too. Otherwise it gets really boring.
JD: Is Neale Sourna your real name?
NS: Yes. And no. Not my given birth name but is the name, well, names given to me. One per night from two separate entities, in two separate dreams on consecutive nights. Liked them both when I broke down the syllables to see what each meant. Then realized they were a good name together.
Added an extra E to give the name a little more sexual ambiguity. I'd toyed with other writing/business names -- using my own seemed too personal and egocentric. Neale Sourna really suits me. It's Cleveland-ethnicky, nongender specific, and who I am ... sometimes.
Neal, Neale [British isles] = chieftain
Sourna [Persia, Iran, Middle East] = warrior aunt
JD: Like doing autographs?
NS: Not really, not yet. I usually like meeting people; but, autographs are ... odd. Except on a check for me to cash. I suppose autographs are proof that you met the author, provided someone didn't fake you out and sign in their stead. But, if I have friends and relatives that don't believe my stories of meeting someone then maybe there's something wrong with them or me.
But, that's just me.
A Cary Grant or Zane autograph are rare, I rather like that; but, please, enjoy my work, talk to me for awhile if we meet and let's steer away from hurting my mitt with writer's cramp. I have a lotta stories yet jostling my brain and fingertips to get out and down.
JD: What research, if any, did you do for Hobble?
NS: [Inter]Net research about female reproductive castration and reversal possibilities, checking with a nephew for correct lyrics for the quote from Depeche Mode and for the correct title for the Dave Matthews Band single mentioned, and um, I think that's it for formal type research stuff. The rest came from things I've read and seen and heard over the years and brain stored in case of conversation or such.
JD: What experiences or expertise make you qualified to write this story?
NS: That I feel for these people, these characters, the good and the bad. And, as you can see the line between goodness and badness, to me, is exceedingly fine and mutable. I could hear these people, see their side. I don't necessarily feel characters are images I myself just make up and manipulate. I did that a long time ago, or not so long ago, before the flow.
Once you really feel and see them, and let characters do and say what they need to or want to, despite what you yourself might would do--that alone makes an author qualified. It's like telling someone what you saw or heard.
So many people can't do that without embellishing. You tell them, "The dog died." And, they're repeating that a white Chihuahua was beaten to death by a peglegged Italian. Colorful but not the same simple, singular truth as, "The dog died."
JD: Why is the lead character Benn who he is and why? How'd you get his voice?
NS: Benn is Benn because he's what Day wanted. She came first, then Hopkins, then my general hero, who pops to the fore in my mind. From there our intrepid hero grew and changed, and from giving me the first paragraph of the book, which established a certain physicality and technical/educational background for him and clarified that he and not Ms. Day would be telling this story.
I did make a conscious decision of trying to figure out what he looked like, instead of general generic N Sourna hero and to get a better grasp of who he was. I didn't want him to be plainly white American, and straight Black American seemed too something, she was different [and at that time and not till the end did I know her full background myself] from Hopkins [there's your white male, British, but, y'know].
Then with the physical qualities, the possible range of emotion Day was likely to trigger in a man who truly wanted her or loved her, and deciding to try contemporary, urban Native American, Ben Bratt popped into mind. He has the physical characteristics that were surfacing, I know his physical voice and some of his emotional performance range, and his ethnicity with a little tampering suited me.
Plus, synchronicity.
I thought to give Bennet long hair and a beard to cue us about his life being different -- Piñero with Bratt came out and he was making the rounds in some footage, bearded and longer haired. [I love those confirmation moments. When I can make sense of them.]
Once he was in place, and Benn given his name, his narrative voice, his amorality, his humor and bewildering desires just were. He's a guy I could get along with and have a conversation with; but, he's not me. That is so cool. Characters really are kind of like having children. They're part of you, but not you. The best ones go their own way but take you along.
JD: What's your next project?
NS: Project(s). I was going to work on compiling and buffing up a collection of erotica short stories I have, first, but my other two novels, AEGIS and WATCHTOWER, and some other stories, plus marketing my work are keeping me rotating them to whichever one is bugging me the most and nagging at my narrative memory, until I have to jot down or key it down for my own sake.
Originally, I'd planned to release one or both of the novels next. I released HOBBLE first because it was the smallest and most complete. Figured I learn the book publishing and marketing business with that first. Now, though, I'll continue working on everything until one of them is finished.
That'll be the next release, most likely. AEGIS probably has more scenes needed at the moment but I want to do some more actual historical and cultural research to anchor WATCHTOWER since I'm still figuring whether to release it as one book or as two with most likely a third or...?
Check the website [www.neale-sourna.com], though, in the meanwhile, I'll try to add some material to tantalize and tease and hopefully fulfill your intellectual erotic hunger.
JD: Thank you, Neale.
NS: Your welcome.
What a surprise! Thank you so much. It looks "mahhhvelous," don't you think? Thank you, Dolores Thornton, thank you, BlackRefer.com, for this sehr tres cool honor. -- Neale
Read Excerpt
of
|
"Hobble is a story of lust and obsessive sex...I was
so moved...I went back to my (Franklin) dictionary...hobble means to
limp along...to impede...to tie-up, shackle or leash...all of [which] were used
in this steamy story, of sex, incest and betrayal!"--Delores Thornton,
BlackRefer.com Reviews
READ Delores'
full review
[also posted at www.BlackRefer.com Review for July 2003]
[also posted at www.BlackRefer.com Review for July 2003]
* * *
http://www.neale-sourna.com/interview--1-2003--JDuke.html
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